


The End of the World as We Know It

by wargoddess



Series: Prompts [9]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 16:19:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8997961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: The Wardens all die at Ostagar, but Cullen finds himself a reason to keep fighting. For a time, anyway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Grimdark trash; I'm having a shitty weekend and needed to purge some angst. Rocks fall and everybody dies, but sometimes it's the how of a thing that matters more than the what.

     It's the end of the world as Cullen knows it. It ended when a blood mage unleashed the Void upon the tower of Kinloch Hold, though Cullen didn't know it at the time. It ended again when that blood mage imprisoned him with a demon and left him to die, though Cullen didn't. (Mostly.) It ended a third time when Knight Commander Greagoir and the other surviving Templars finally barelled through and slaughtered all the demons and all the surviving mages and saved Cullen, the lone survivor. Mostly.

     He walks southward out of the tower, walks away from his calling and his commander and his faith, walks down the road and meets a man walking up it. He stops there, because the ravaged hollowness in the man's eyes is something of a match for what Cullen feels -- and that is something he never ever expected to encounter, period, let alone within a day's walk of the tower.

     That's when he learns the world actually ended a few weeks ago, at Ostagar.

     "They're coming," says the man, who says his name is Carver Hawke. "The horde. The Wardens are all dead; nothing to stop it anymore. Don't go that way."

     So Cullen pivots to walk at Carver Hawke's side. He points westward, toward the tower. "There are -- were -- are -- " He shakes his head. His pointing hand shakes. "Demons there. Don't go that way."

     "Right," says Hawke. "North, then. Though east's all right too, for now."

     Cullen nods. He thinks of the howls of the demons through the corridors, which lulled him to sleep for too many nights. Perhaps darkspawn sound the same? They cannot sound much worse. "Is there any point?" he asks. It is the same question he asked himself, again and again during his time in the cage. It would have been so easy to give up. So much of him died in that cage. He _should_ have given up. Why didn't he? Perhaps because some part of him was waiting. For what?

     Carver looks up, and the part of Cullen that was waiting immediately loosens and curls forth, stretching toward... He doesn't know. Carver laughs softly, in utter despair, but his blue eyes linger.

     "No point at all," Carver says. "Let's just make Death work for its meat, yeah?"

     "Yes," says Cullen. There is a stillness in him for the first time since he looked into Uldred's eyes and realized that what looked out of them was not human. "Let's live for as long as we may."

#

     In Redcliffe they kill a horde of undead. Easier than demons or darkspawn. The local bann is terrified; he tells them to retreat with the townsfolk to the Chantry. Cullen looks at Carver, who grins a deathshead smile. Cullen thinks, _I would follow you to the grave_ , and draws his sword as well. Then they tell the bann to bar the doors behind them, and they fling themselves into fate. Surprisingly, they survive.

     In the palace they find a boy infested by a demon and this time Cullen does not hesitate. There's enough lyrium left in his blood to help suppress the beast, while Carver runs it -- and the boy, but he was lost anyway -- through. In the wake of it the arlessa kills herself and the arl dies and there's no point to it, no point to any of it at all, but they tell the bann to bring what's left of the arl's people to Denerim. Last stands, and all.

     As the people pack their meager belongings and despair descends in their wake, Carver leads Cullen to the empty tavern. A few untapped kegs are left; not many townsfolk left to drink them. Cullen has been in the Chantry since the age of thirteen, and Kinloch was isolated; he has his first beer. Then another and, with Carver's raucous encouragement, another. It is perhaps shameful that he gets drunk so quickly. It is also perhaps shameful that he needs the courage of this to speak his heart to Carver:

     "You are beautiful," he slurs, though earnestly. "Beautiful and frightening and, and you look of what I feel, inside." This makes no sense. He realizes it and blushes deeply. "I... I wish to die with you. If you will have me."

     Carver -- no less in his cups -- looks honestly surprised and a little touched. Then he grins. "You're a right romantic arse, aren't you?" Cullen looks away in shame, but then Carver grabs Cullen's hand and pulls him over to the rug in front of the hearth.

     "Just a little death, for now," Carver says. He's standing so close that Cullen can feel the tickle of his breath, the warmth of his body. "'Til the bigger one happens along."

     For a while thereafter, Death is not the only thing coming.

#

     Carver has lost everything. That is the yawning chasm that lives behind his bright blue eyes and easy smile. His life as a farmer, his dreams -- of becoming a Templar, no less -- his patriotism, his shield-brothers of the army, his real brother, his twin sister, his mother, his home. Cullen has given up everything. His family, his faith, his brethren of the Order, his bright future as an knight of rank, his oath, and no small portion of his sanity.

     They are a match -- madness for madness, grief for grief, emptiness for emptiness, bloodthirst for bloodthirst. Carver's from a mage family, but he doesn't chide Cullen for his hysterical reaction to magic and its wielders. Cullen was raised to think of atheists as enemies, heretics, but he does not take Carver to task for his lack of faith -- since, after all, Cullen no longer believes in the myth of the Maker, either.

     In most things Carver leads. He chooses their battles, chooses their campsites, does all the talking when they meet others along the road, tells Cullen when it is safe to uncurl because the mages are finally gone. Carver's leadership is pure practicality, because Cullen is as sheltered as any Circle mage and isn't even clear on how to buy things with money before Carver shows him how. In lovemaking, however --

     -- if it can be called that, if it is not just a different way for the doomed to cling to one another while the sky falls, if frenzied grinding and bruising kisses can truly be considered a way to _make_ something called _love_ out of the nothingness that lives inside them both --

     -- Cullen takes control. He is the hungry one. His body _aches_ with ten thousand wants that drive him awake in the small hours and grip him as he lies beside Carver, finding even the sound of the other man's breathing erotic. Carver laughs whenever he awakens to find Cullen looming over him, but then he unlaces his trousers or rolls over or opens his mouth. He never says no. He is a bottomless font of welcome and acceptance and warmth and pleasure, and it is not Cullen's fault that the demon put so many thoughts into his head, awakened so many desires in him that he did not know he possessed. It _isn't_ his _fault_.

     He begs Carver's forgiveness even as he ravages Carver's body, and it is a balm that Carver merely sighs and shuts his eyes and lets Cullen take his fill. "Shut it, you fool. Sodding _harder_ , I'm not made of eggs."

     After, though -- that is Carver's time. That is when Cullen must lie entangled in the other man's arms, head pillowed on a broad chest, trapped by encircling legs. It is terrifying. Carver's fingers in his hair are so much like the demon's. Sometimes Carver's nails are jagged, not talons but still painful, and Cullen flinches despite his resolve. (Carver starts filing his nails after the first few incidences of this.) But Cullen stays, despite the fear, despite the sweat that breaks out all over his body, despite the fact that he cannot sleep like this for fear of waking back in the cage. Carver needs him close. Needs Cullen to make up for everything and everyone missing from his life. Cullen hears him swallow sometimes, a sob caught in his chest, and somehow he knows that the man is thinking of his dead twin. He makes himself stroke Carver's hair and Carver groans a little, because invariably Cullen will have done it the way Carver's older brother or father or mother used to. One time Cullen bites him as loveplay and Carver shudders so violently that Cullen knows he is remembering the family _dog_. Such are the only times when Cullen will leash his cravings. He wants only to inflict pleasure, never true pain. They have both had more than enough of that.

     It isn't love, Cullen feels certain. They're using each other. To love, one must have hope, after all.

     They exploit one another desperately, tenderly, completely.

#

     Denerim is the end in so many ways. They're out of continent. Nowhere left to run, except across the sea to the Free Marches, and the horde will simply travel there through the Deep Roads and it will all start again. By silent mutual agreement, Cullen and Carver will not take ship. They'll die with Fereldan soil beneath their feet.

     Teryn Loghain has been deposed, but it's too late and Denerim's defenses are... well. There's nothing but a thin wall between the 'spawn and half a million poor souls -- the wall, and nothing but the few fighters like Cullen and his Hawke who are content to die beneath the horde's spears and arrows in the vague hope of buying time for survivors to escape. Bann Teagan, king now, has begged other lands for ships to cart away civilians, but they won't arrive in time. The city guard is passing out confiscated weapons to any who ask, at one of the arsenals. The apothecaries are handing out poison to all who choose. Chantry sisters are particularly advising that women of childbearing age take this option, lest they become mothers to other hordes that will ravage other lands. (The younger sisters all have their own vials, Cullen notes, on little chains 'round their necks. They will administer prayers until they can't, and then they will go to Andraste. Even without faith, Cullen can admire their strength.)

     Everyone hears the 'spawn well before they see them. Carver has told Cullen to expect this sound, since he heard it at Ostagar. Darkspawn do not sound human. The roar of their approaching army is a gabble, a growl, a chitter, which does not so much swell in volume as become constant. Then they come running out of the dark with no sort of strategy or formation, just... bloody hundreds of them. Thousands. Cullen glances at Carver; Carver grins back. The deathshead mask is both their faces now, eyes gone wide and stark, stretching lips back from teeth. He is so very beautiful like this, Cullen thinks for the ten thousandth time. His Carver.

     Then they strike forth and kill, and kill, and kill. Cullen's arm grows weary, but he presses on. He runs out of the strength to Smite and throws Silencings instead, then can't even do that much. An ogre breaks his shield, and his arm. Carver yanks him back before the creature can snatch Cullen up and crush him -- Cullen knows that's how Carver's twin died -- and there are blurring jumbles of pain-punctuated time, and then suddenly they are stumbling through the broken doors of the Chantry. It's a bloodbath inside, still bodies and gore all over the floor, shrieks having tunneled up through the floor not long after the battle began. Cullen stumbles over some rubble and sees an unbroken poison vial on the floor, still full and still attached to its snapped chain. He hopes the sister who lost it managed to find some other weapon, and that Andraste will be with her nevertheless.

     Then they are at the altar. The chittering of the horde is a wave of endless sound outside the broken doors. Gleaming eyes peer in at them. Small stealthy inhuman bodies begin to creep through the door and up from the hole in the floor, gathering into numbers enough to overwhelm. They hesitate only because Cullen and Carver have killed so many of them. Thus they bear witness.

     Carver slumps against the altar, panting for air. Something has smashed his whole right side; he lurches on one leg, leans on the old wood with one arm, squints at Cullen with only one eye. Cullen is half sprawled on the altar, but he pushes himself up with one hand. He's still got his sword-arm, but Carver does not. Then this is the end for both of them, Cullen decides.

     Well, not quite. Carver left-draws his dagger and grins with half his mouth. "D'you?"

     Cullen fumbles at his waist. No dagger, but he's still got his sword, and it's not too nicked. Covered in darkspawn blood, but at this point that hardly matters. "I do."

     "Right, then." Carver stumbles over. He puts his dagger at Cullen's throat, a little clumsily, but the edge is sharp and true. Cullen positions his sword-tip carefully at Carver's. Carver's grin is so weary, so bloody, so right. He is everything that Cullen has been missing since Kinloch. Of course they should have had more, been more, but this is what it means to live through the apocalypse: Things do not go as they should. There is pain. Horror. Hope fades.

     But fighting back still has meaning. Love still has meaning. Some things are not about how one dies, but how one has lived.

     _The apocalypse can fuck right off to the Void_ , Cullen thinks, with only a little shame for his mental language. Carver's bad influence. Then he pleads, "Kiss me."

     "Romantic arse," Carver replies, but it is heavy with meaning, and his grin is tender.

     The 'spawn sweep toward them. Cullen leans forward first, pressing despite the resistance of flesh and cartilage, pushing against the brief bright pain at his own throat. Then, though, he has Carver's lips. Carver coughs, but Cullen feels him strain to keep them together. Cullen lets go the sword-hilt -- its work is done -- and grabs the other man's shoulder to hold him, keep him, near. It's perfect. He feels fine at last, as the world goes black.

**Author's Note:**

> If you need a pick-me-up after this little bit of awful, I recommend another postapocalyptic Carver/Cullen ficlet, with a happier ending: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1480456


End file.
